


a space for amusement

by fedoranonymous



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Art School, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Retail, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Anxiety, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Bars and Pubs, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Drinking & Talking, Dropping Out, Gen, Past Suicide Attempt, Smoking, Social Anxiety, Suicidal Thoughts, Unreliable Narrator, Work In Progress, aromantic protagonist, asexual protagonist, gamer culture, it's a happy story i swear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-06-16 05:17:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15429813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fedoranonymous/pseuds/fedoranonymous
Summary: Keith Kogane wakes up and doesn't go to class. Again. It's about time he gets his life back together. You know: drop out of the classes he isn't going to, get a job, talk to other humans including his oldest friend, bathe regularly.Maybe he should have done this a while ago.





	1. inspirational speakers are the most passive aggressive people is2g

**Author's Note:**

> For everyone looking at that mountain of tags: it's going to be a mountain of a fic, is all. Even before I realized it was going to take a small novel to get through each "chapter" on my outline, I planned on this being a mountain of a fic.

As Keith wakes, he dreams a memory of an Inspirational Speaker ™ who spoke at his middle school. Generic Meaningful Phrases ™ swim up to his mind, fighting consciousness to the staccato screeching of his alarm, not in the order they were spoken but in the order his brain randomly associates them. Something something… find “that thing” that makes you happy … and do “that thing”… be the best at “that thing” … make everyone you meet in your life acknowledge “that thing” that motivates and empowers you… and so on, until the words “that thing” became meaningless syllables that Keith still couldn’t hear to this day without his brain wanting to ooze out his ears a little. But the dream, whatever it had been, had recontextualized the placebo-flavored platitudes into a more humble, realistic shape. Like maybe, anything he might do would be fine in the long run if only he made sure to also have space in his life for “that thing”.

The realization that his life, as it is now, does not have that space – that Keith had, while not putting it that way, paved over as much of that space as possible in a random, chaotic universe – makes him lay still in bed (…okay, not that unusual…), stare silently at the ceiling (also not unusual), and ignore his alarm (…but usually he being able to think is not the reason he does these things, okay?). School… had not made him happy since long before that Inspirational Speaker ™ had spoken to a group of uninterested kids Keith’s age, to be honest. Learning something new, if it was personally interesting, sure – no way is Keith the only person in the world who’s wikiwalked from microbreweries to strange quarks at 3 in the morning – but the easy-to-grade monkey work and the endless testing just sucks the fun out of everything. Which was why the art major, but there’ still something… lifeless… about the whole experience, and Keith feels like he’s been spinning his wheels in place for ages now.

And what does Keith do when he’s not endlessly staring at blank sketchbooks, canvases, blocks of clay, word documents, notebooks, ceilings… well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Long enough that the very thought of checking his email gives him a panic attack so bad he has to drink lots of cold water and concentrate very hard on not hurling. And that’s the point, right? In not giving himself space to fucking exist, in guilt tripping himself every time he even thinks about something other than being Productive ™, he’s been, like, accelerating himself into a downward spiral that touches every aspect of his fucking existence.

Well, fuck that!

Keith smacks the alarm clock off the coffee table and kicks at it until it and his next door neighbor stop screaming at him. He pulls himself off the couch and finds a decently clean shirt, not with the intention of going to class (god, no, not today, he can’t) but of getting himself some froyo, because the ice cream place is farther away and also raspberry is a great flavor.

* * *

 

Froyo in hand, the first thing Keith does when he boots up his desktop is delete all the automated emails from his university, which at least gets the unread count down from “…” to an actual number. Actual, non-mailing-list emails from teachers and surprisingly a lot of fellow students will probably need an actual reply, but Not Today, so they get hidden in a folder. That leaves a bunch of advertisements, fanfiction, forum alerts… on the one hand, he will eventually want to read some of those, but on the other, they’d moved on well enough without him, and he really wanted to see that fucking number go down to zero. Bye bye! <3 

The last things in his inbox are an ad for the game store on the ground floor of his shitty, overpriced, unnecessarily spacious apartment building, which is honestly Necessary Information that will Save Keith Money because he has an Addiction; one for the small, one-screen theatre down the block, which was always good for a laugh; and a personal email from Shirogane, Takashi.

The last time Keith and Shiro had spoken was when they had packed all of his things safely away so Shiro could take them to the glorified boarding house across the street from the labs where Shiro would be doing like 90% of the work towards his Master’s Degree, and that day had been. So awkward. Because Shiro had been _so drunk_ the night before, and Keith wasn’t sure what he remembered but clearly he remembered _something_ because he was so _pissy_ , even moreso than he usually was with a hangover. Every time Keith missed having a roommate (having the first friend he had ever made since moving out of his foster mother’s toxic fucking household as a roommate), he remembered that day and decided to just suffer instead. Besides, he’d have to like… leave his room or go on craigslist or something. Just. Nah.

But Shiro had emailed, a simple _Check this out, loser, you’ll love it_ for a subject line and only a link in the body, but it had come in while Keith had been blowing off classes en masse… 

Clicking the link brings him to pidge_on, a hyperstylized game development site with a sort of garishly uglycute style Keith falls instantly in love with. The page’s subtitle declares that Pidge (Pidgeon? Pidge On Gamespace.com, that’s kind of clever, but what do you want to be _called_ , you pigeon fuck?) has the Systems Knowledge and would Break the good Games out of the Code or some shit… it’s absolute word vomit, with an overall feeling some twee kiddo wearing a black coat and posting it to the three people who would see it with some #tooedgyforwalmart type shit. Keith’s already smiling, and he hasn’t even gotten to the _game_.

The one in particular that Shiro had directed him towards is called “Spookie Busties Inc.” The screenshots show a pair of simple but unpolished cartoon women fighting and navigating around some kind of horrifically designed photoshop monstrosities. The blurb’s something about how the titular lesbians (thanks for specifying, you dirty pigeon fucker) trying to find a _paying_ client whose ghost they could bust before their sleezy landlord comes collecting. The artwork’s the kind of deliberately off-model mess that’s either going to animate fucking _gorgeously_ or be absolutely hilarious, and the story’s novel enough not to slog, and Keith _needs_ to boot up this game the second he can. Hey, it’s _free_! Even if it’s awful, any time invested at all will be well worth the money.

* * *

The game is not awful. The game is the best thing Keith’s experienced in pretty much the whole time he’s known how to use a computer, but admittedly Keith’s a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to picking out games he likes.

The game’s even less polished than the screenshots suggest, Pidge_on clearly picking out the best-looking artwork in the game to highlight as one should, but the artwork is _effective_ at creating an atmosphere and at conveying what things are supposed to be, and the difference between the “spookies” (“You mean ghosts?” “Ghosts aren’t _cute_ , and _we_ are _cute_.”) and the rest of the art reminds Keith of watching the animation frames in Scooby-Doo and waiting for the trap to spring. And it’s _funny_ , this very cynical kind of “everything goes wrong, and then goes wrong some more” kind of humor that just really gels well with the mood Keith’s already in. And the _gameplay_! Easily the best part, as it _fucking should be in a videogame_ , _I’m looking at you “AAA” game studios_ , stealthing around to avoid the spookies and the landlord and the even the clients while planting traps and rituals feels good, giving the whole thing a feel of taking a cheeky midnight swim in your own pool. When he reached the final, non-death ending after two and a half hours, he was kind of disappointed. What a wonderful little project; if only there was more.

Keith sticks the last spoonful of no-longer-frozen yogurt in his mouth as he jots down a quick reply. _Thanks, I loved it_ feels kinda impersonal, so he adds a smiley face before hitting send. Which brings him back to the message he’s replying to, with his mouse cursor hovering just under “Date: January 23”… nearly two month ago.

Fuck.

First that he’s apparently blown off this entire semester, and more pressingly that Shiro had surely given up on ever getting a reply from him. Well, no taking it back now. Keith would just have to die, painfully, an hour at a time, until he got a reply, unless he didn’t, in which case he’d never know for _sure_ so he would just have to think about it _forever_ … oh dear god, why hadn’t he thought to check the date before he even opened the email? Why hadn’t he just deleted everything older than a week anyway? Why did he have to–

His email refreshes, and there’s a reply. 

Shiro’s reply is short enough that the preview contains the whole message: _How TF RU stranger?_ And a winky face, rendered in cartoonish yellow glory, so Shiro must be responding from his cellphone.

Patience, and a manual refresh because it may have been like almost a year but Shiro is _Shiro_ , yields a follow-up: _Appntly paragraphs are NOT allowed on mobile, smh. So you finally played pidge’s game, huh? What do you think? Nd dont make me pull teeth!_

Opinion. On… a game? Predictably, Keith’s mind completely blanks. _It was good, I liked it._ Wait, he already said that… _wow so this is what creativity looks like. Funny how you never see anything that #Fresh in art school._ Is Keith the kind of guy who uses hashtags in emails? He feels like it kind of conveys a certain, like… catch-on-ability of the game? Whatever, it was how he’d thought the thought, it’s gonna be how he sends it out into the world.

Something clicks, in the back of Keith’s head. It snaps into place between the smile on his face and the sudden ease he’s facing a(n admittedly easy mode) social situation with, and the weight that lifted from his shoulders when he’d emptied his email of everything ending in .edu, like the edges of a puzzle, but Keith’s not looking for the where the phrase “not in art school” suddenly belongs in his mind yet. He’s looking for Shiro’s next reply, and trying to assure himself that Shiro has an inexpensive-but-still-unbearably-fancy smartphone, and the email won’t get cut off for being too long.

 _Bitter, much?_ Comes Shiro’s reply. _It can’t be that bad._

 _The thought of going to class makes me want to hurl_ , Keith does not send. _I can only make myself eat if I convince myself I won’t have to look someone from the school in the eye for the rest of the day_ , Keith does not type. _If I try to kill myself again, no one will find my body until someone complains about the smell,_ he refuses to think. (He thinks about it a lot, but he refuses to remember that, too.)

 _Who’d’ve thought art students were pretentious dickwads?_ Keith writes instead.

* _YOUMST_ Shiro replies, and Keith giggles himself halfway to tears as piece after piece of his puzzle clicks into place. It’s been, like, four hours, but his face hurts from smiling so much after so long without.

 _Fuck_ , adds Shiro, _I was supposed to be @ the lab an hour ago. Text me later?_ **  
**

And a third: _O wait u cnt n tht bric of urs cn u? :P_

 _Fuck you,_ types Keith. _Brad & I have been thru EVERYTHING together >:P_

 _2 bfs, 3 jbsgukaf_ Aaaand Shiro’s texting (emailing) and jogging again, of course. One of these days he’s going to get hit by a bus.

 _Exactly, nothing can replace Brad!_ He sends, like the enabler he is.

_Xcept a bttr phone lol_

_Go do your job, email me whenever, dork,_ Keith sends, and the idea that Keith does not want or need to be bound to his current schedule fills in enough of the puzzle to start to see the picture.

Keith spends the rest of his afternoon and well into the night downloading and playing lovingly made uglycute games about women who are almost as tired as Keith himself is, and in the morning he formally drops out of college.


	2. at least with low standards, you've got plenty of options

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's easier to say "I'm quitting school and getting a shitty day job" than to actually do it when you've been ignoring the fact that you have to make a choice for months, but if you can't even say it then you've got a lot of work ahead of you.

It had never occurred to Keith before today to be grateful that so many of his scholarships had been from Hallmark’s greeting card contest and other “cash or scholarship” prizes, because on this, the first day of his emancipation from a broken system, he may be dirt broke, but he isn’t in debt and he has a place to live at least until the end of May, which is a hell of a lot more he had the last time he got out of a bureaucratic nightmare that was actively working against him. His fingers are beating a constant rhythm against his phone in his front pocket, leftover jitters from an argument that he was _not_ going to turn into a fistfight, but he had his damn receipts ready and after a long-ass day of increasingly sternly-worded emails, phone calls, and even a personal trip to the registrar’s office, Keith is the hell out of dodge with no injury to his own person.

Normally, after a day like today, Keith would need to find something to hit. He’d broken Shiro’s old punching bag once, letting out all the anger that he had left simmering. But Keith doesn’t need to find the new one in their-now-his additional storage in the basement. He keeps grabbing the hair on the back of his neck because the last time he’d felt this fucking _light_ he’d lost it all to an overly enthusiastic new foster mother and “looking like a part of this family” (and not his old one; the father and grandmother who had both died in his presence over an increasing terrible first grade year). The giddiness is similar, too. He taps and skips and stops to admire a bed of tulips because he can’t stop _smiling_ and it’s probably creeping people out around him. Keith has been reliably assured that his smile ranges from “unnoticeable” to “unpleasant” _only_.

So, like, he _has_ a place to live for the next couple of months, he _could_ rest on a job well done… but Keith can’t be sure how long this good mood will last, and besides, he’s actually??? Kind of??? Excited??? To be moving the fuck on with his life??? So how do you apply for a job, anyway? Look in a newspaper, probably. Do weekday papers have classifieds or will he have to wait ‘til Sunday? Oh. There are websites, aren’t there? Well, never let it be said that Keith doesn’t know his strengths.

He’s on his way into the one lobby in the multi-purpose housing and shopping complex that will let him up to his particular unit when his landlord stops him. Or, actually, his landlord’s assistant? Probably? Whichever. Keith would rather deal with Coran anyway: he’s nicer more often.

“If it isn’t the man himself!” Coran says, jogging out an automatic loading door that’s still opening with a decapitated cardboard character from the game store under one arm. “Keith, my boy, my phone has been ringing off the hook today, and everyone I talk to has one man on their mind!”

“Yeah, it’s been a day,” Keith says, checking the hair on the back of his neck again; it’s getting long, finally. “None of this should affect you guys, though – it’s my damn money either way, you know?”

“Right,” says Coran. “Come here for a minute, will you?” and he takes Keith rather gingerly by the elbow and leads him back through the automatic loading door, now closing, and into the game store’s storage room. It, uh, it hasn’t been organized in a while, to say the least. Keith watches his feet to try to avoid stepping on any misplaced merchandise and nearly beans himself on a palette sticking out rather unfortunately at about eye level before Coran finds a safe place to park themselves. “You dropped out?” Coran asks, face full of an emotion that Keith cannot parse; too many conflicting signals.

“Yeah,” Keith sighs, hand finding his phone in its pocket and tapping rhythmlessly.

“It’s been a while,” Coran says, hand hovering over Keith’s shoulder like he isn’t certain what to do with it, “weren’t you a junior already?”

“Yyyeahhh,” Keith sighs harder, toothier. He knows the shape of this conversation from experience, has already had it once just today; Coran, being a person he has actually willingly shared a meal with, is infinitely more deserving of the chance to lecture. (…Okay, a building-wide potluck, but Keith had parked his ass at the landlords’ table, and Coran was a hell of a storyteller.)

What he’s saying is, the hug blindsides him. Coran says, emphatically, to the hair on the top of Keith’s head: “I hate watching when kids as talented and passionate as you get beaten down like this.” And, well. For once, Keith can appreciate the sympathy for what it is. He hugs Coran back.

“Ugh, someone really needs to sort all of this,” Allura says from the door to the shop proper with the kind of tone someone can usually only achieve when muttering, but Allura’s voice has always carried even when it has no right to. “Coran, are you– oh, you found him. You” –she points to Keith– “stay right where you are; and you” –and to Coran– “It’s madness out there.”

“Right you are, Princess,” Coran mock salutes, giving Keith’s shoulder a squeeze before heading out. “Where _are_ those part-timers anyway?”

“In _class_ , Coran,” says Allura. “The ones who actually show up for work tend to actually go to class, too.”

And they’re gone, and Keith stays right where he is, as instructed… for about five minutes. Someone _really_ needs to sort all of this.

* * *

 

Once Keith finds an old CD player with the _Fantastic Four_ (2005 version) soundtrack still in it, he really gets into it. Mmm, Orange Range. That’s get shit done music right there.

His growling stomach reminds him that he skipped lunch today just before Allura opens the door. “Keith–? You aren’t still in…” when Keith turns around, Allura is staring at the organized piles he had managed to sort the most hazardously constructed messes into. “I left you alone for five minutes,” she says, hollow, like she’s still not all the way back to reality.

“It was more like five hours, but,” Keith shrugs, “I found a way to entertain myself.”

“You’re hired,” says Allura. Which. Um???

“… to… clean the storage area? Or…” Not like Keith doesn't have _plenty_ of cleaning experience, but he'd been assured they weren't in need of a janitor back when he and Shiro had first moved in.

“Well, you’ve already gotten such a good start,” Allura states as she sits on a recently uncovered sofa. “And, well, I’ve been trying to get the time to ask all day… what _are_ your plans, Keith?

Sitting next to Allura seems like the thing to do. It’s the thing Keith’s doing, anyway; why isn’t there a training manual for things like this? “I mean like… I know that. I need like.” Keith shakes his hands like he’s holding some kind of imaginary bag that the words he needs are hiding in, which is a bad habit, but he’s starting to realize that Shiro’s right pretty often, and most people don’t mind… or at least, he’s lucked out about the ones he’s made himself answerable to. “Some kind of job. But like… do you want the story, or just an answer?”

“I’m desperately curious,” says Allura, all reserved mixed signals and impossible to read, but in a pleasant way (?), “but I know you enjoy your privacy.”

“ _Where do people keep getting that impression from?_ ” asks Keith, a little desperately. “That is. The opposite of the truth. Holy shit.” Seriously? Why. Keith is a bucket of TMI set to overflow at any moment, he's sure.

Allura, bless her children’s children, actually puts her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, eyes wide enough to sparkle even in the dim light of sunset through a high window: no more mixed signals. “So go on,” she adds, just to be sure.

“So like,” it’s easier to talk if he looks out those high windows at the purpling clouds. “I know I need to make money and shit, whatever, but the whole reason I needed to drop out is, I was too busy guilt tripping myself over not being On Track to Achieve My Dreams, or whatever the actual fuck I was saying I was doing –” Keith shakes his head, hard. No, don’t get bogged down in that. It took months to get out of it the first time. “Too busy guilt tripping myself, right, to do anything _fun_. So like, actual goals wise, the plan is to do something... I dunno,  _not miserable,_ for a change. Boring, grown-up plans wise, like: get a shitty job so I don’t feel like I have to bring it home with me all the time, you know?”

Allura bumps her shoulder against Keith’s, casual. “If you’re planning on sticking around, then I’m keeping the advanced payment on your room, and to hell with what your university says. I wouldn’t put past them to _try_ and find another student to send our way, but I doubt it would happen this late in the year.”

“And I have a second bedroom, anyway,” adds Keith, encouragingly; actually, he has a first, too, since he’s way too tired to make it past the couch most days anyway, but that could change eventually, hopefully.

“That too,” Allura smiles at him like she sees all the world’s secrets laid out in front of her; it’s the kind of smile anyone with a heart, and contrary to popular rumor Keith has one, would do anything to try and draw out; if only Keith knew what he’d said that was so damn funny. “And _apparently_ I need more daytime help anyway, so if you’re interested, we’ll finish cleaning this storeroom tonight and start training you tomorrow?”

“You don’t have to invent a job opening just for me,” says Keith, knee bouncing at Mach 2, not because he likes shooting himself in the proverbial foot, but because that’s the kind of thing that only leads to drama later.

“Of course not,” says Allura, flipping her hair very primly to her other shoulder, “I always hire at least four people at a time, because three of them will quit in the first week, if they even show up for the first day.”

…Keith thinks of the shouting matches he’s gotten into with old man Slav through the wall because he can’t decide if he wants to hit the snooze button again or nah. “…Can we count today as my first day? I feel like I need an edge.”

Allura smiles that stunning smile again. “Alright, but you’re fetching dinner. Come on, take-away menus are out front.”


	3. is basic human decency really that synonymous with flirting?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith gets to work, after a fashion; Lance stops by and does not, actually, have a crush on anyone (yet).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real life can suck a big one. This is actually the first time I've touched my computer in two weeks and probably the last time I will for another two. Every other Wednesday is still a perfectly fine schedule, anyway.

“I’m here!” Keith says first thing as he rushes through the storefront door, just a bit winded from an all-out sprint back across campus. He really needs to pick up some cardio; that was barely a mile. “I’m sorry, I – I forgot where I was going.”  
  
“Really?” asks Allura from behind the counter as she rearranges the under-counter merchandise display. She glares levelly as he marches up to the door to the back storage area, to hurry up and throw his (empty, which should have been a damn clue) bookbag on the lumpy old loveseat back there. When he turns back, checking the hair on the back of his neck again (it isn’t _back_ , but he’s proud of what he _has_ managed on his own terms), she’s smiling at him again, that same all-the-secrets smile. “Seriously?” she asks, a little disbelieving but mostly just laughing at him.

That’s fine; he’s laughing too.

He shrugs. “I haven’t had a job in three years,” unless you count applying for _all_ the scholarships and, you know, school stuff, “and the autopilot doesn’t disengage until the second coffee.”

Allura bumps against his shoulder, and she’s smiling, so that’s probably a friendly thing? Somehow? So he pushes back, just enough that she can feel it. “No wonder Slav keeps bitching about your damn alarm. Come here.” Under the counter, but not in one of the displays, she finds him a white vest, with a pre-made name tag already attached. 

“Cadet n00b?” Keith asks, one eyebrow making its way into his hairline, never to return. 

“You can have a real nametag _if_ you actually manage to complete training,” she says. The nametag on her black vest is and white and says _Princess Al_ , in pink and blue bubble letters, to go with the whole “Gaming Castle” idea. Apparently her dad’s, well before Keith had drifted into town, had said _King Al_ , because Altor and Allura were uncommon enough to make some people nervous. Keith wonders if the name tag is that old; it doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing the current Allura would pick. 

“No other complaints?” Allura prompts, hesitantly, as he pulls the vest on over his hoodie (yeah, they’re inside, and yeah, it’s almost April, but it’s still so _chilly_ up here, even if some of the girls on campus are putting on their bikinis and tanning in the quad already, the masochists).

“What do you mean?” he asks as she cleans a smudge from the glass in front of them. There’s a customer approaching; they might not get so busy until afternoon, but the store _is_ open. They get distracted for a few minutes as he watches Allura on the register; it has a barcode scanner, and like every register he’s worked before, it automatically calculates the change, so he just needs to be able to count, but the credit card machine is a separate device and, Allura confides, a bit of a headache. The customer, who Keith suspects to be a preschool teacher from his purchase, but is enough a regular that Allura just introduces Keith to him and asks after a “Marietta” while scanning him in, leaves, and Allura turns back to Keith.

“So you’re about to ask why we need uniforms at all, right?” prompts Allura, again. “Because I have a speech ready.”

Keith huffs out a laugh, because “Seriously?” He shakes his head. “Spoiled brats.” His left hand spins in circles in the air as he adds “I’ve been to other friendly-locals before I got here, you know. There’s always that guy who acts like he owns the place, bugging the customers and sneaking into the back or whatever. I like that you have a bit of a uniform here. And it’s just a vest, anyway.”

“Right,” Allura says, airily. “You’ll be just fine… if you learn to relax.” She takes his shoulders, ever so lightly, and uses them to shake him from side to side, like she can shake the tension out of him through simple mechanics.  
  
“You say that now,” says Keith, shaking his head again.  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
So the thing is, Keith crossed three state lines to get here. He can squish his accent and not get made fun of, but he is, properly, from the Deep South. Moreso than anyone gives him credit for, Keith knows how to be simply hospitable, and that’s what most minimum wage work is. Hello, how are you, did you find everything, have a nice day, and most importantly _actually tricking the person on the other side into believing you mean it._  
  
Keith’s not exactly sure what the problem is, per se. The fact that, for the most part, the conversations don’t matter, since people don’t see cashiers as _people_ unless they’re actively trying to be nice, perhaps leaves him a bit too relaxed. Or the easily rehearsed script calms his anxiety too much, because he’s gotten too good at telling himself “hey, you’re doing at least this thing right” after as many strung together shit shifts as he’s pulled himself through. Or maybe the constant tension from trying to not be too friendly to strangers has done something weird to his face, so when he relaxes it goes to far? Maybe?  
  
Allura, like many bosses before her, is skeptical that there even is a problem, so by the time Coran and two part timers who are on track to graduate in May turn up, Keith offers to _show_ her his problem. And he lets himself relax.  
  
He leans his hip against the side of the counter and rearranges the gift card display next to this register to try and calm his nerves while waiting for his unfortunate victim. He lets himself smirk a little, but only on the side that doesn’t have a dimple; he isn’t trying to make this stuff happen, it just… does.  
  
A guy comes up, arms full of booster packs; he snags a xbox gift card too. “Hey,” says Keith, long and easy, like they’re already friends, as he start scanning things in. “How’s it going, buddy? You find everything okay?”  
  
And the guy’s at least a little bit into, whatever, poor college student chic, or mullets, or something, because that’s a direct hit. “Uhhh,” he says, as Keith smiles at him in a perfectly pleasant and vaguely vapid manner, in between making sure he scans the right side of the booster packs and actually gets them in the bag. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I found. The things.”  
  
“You sure?” Keith laughs, and then leans in. “Because I’m the poor soul they roped into reorganizing the place, so if there’s anywhere that needs work, you just point it out to me. Doing me a favor, really.”  
  
“Nooo,” whines the guy, and Keith’s attention is mostly on trying to remember how to activate the xbox card; Allura’s right, the card machine’s a total headache. “I just got used to it the way things are!”  
  
Oh, good, he’s got a sense of humor. Funny guys handle rejection much better. “I knew it!” Keith says, conspiratorially. “There’s no going back; those shelves are going to make _sense_ next time you’re here.” And Keith totals him out, and tries again because how the fuck is five booster packs and a $25 gift card supposed be less than $20, but he laughs it off and the funny guy laughs too, in that way people do where they’re just laughing because someone they find attractive is laughing.  
  
“You have a good one, chum.” Keith hands him his bag, and the guy’s just standing there, even though there is no word less attractive than chum. Do you know what chum is? Disgusting. That’s what.  
  
He’s… still standing there, staring at Keith. Oooh boy. This is happening. Again.  
  
Keith leans in over the register, motions for Lovestruck to do the same. “What’s your name, pal?” He asks, when the guy has leaned in.  
  
“Lance,” says Lance, apparently. His eyes cross as Keith smiles as mean as he can manage.  
  
“Now’s the part where you go home, Lance,” Keith says, trying to radiate _lack of interest._ It, uh. It never works very well.  
  
“Aren’t you in my painting class?” Lance blurts, squinting at him, and _oh god oh god oh no oh no ohno ohno ohnoooo._

That’s basically, like. Keith’s worst fears incarnate, right there. He splutters for a minute, not even able to string together enough syllables to form a word, until he lands on “Not… anymore?”

“Oh no,” says Lance, like he’d been looking forward to seeing Keith in a classroom Keith wasn’t even sure he could find on a map. Had... Had he even shown up for one class session? Well, apparently _one_. “What happened?” 

“Not enough dicks,” says Keith, as flip as possible, turning to the card display again. It’s the first thing that comes to mind, it’s clearly a joke (… he hopes), and he just wants this conversation to _end_ already. Keith is well aware he has lucked out with Allura and Coran, jaded as they’ve been by their own experiences; he’s still expecting _someone_ to give him the whole, “oh, you’re throwing so much hard work away~” speech, but he doesn’t want it from a stranger. Besides, frank discussions of bipolar disorder don’t make the “simply hospitable small talk” list. 

“What?” says Lance, because yeah, _what?_

“Sometimes you just want to draw a lot of dicks,” shrugs Keith, who has never in his life wanted to draw one (1) dick, because honestly he’s more of a mixed media guy at heart, and also when he does draw it’s somewhere between character design and fashion sketches, but these are the lies that are coming out of his mouth, in the name of coming across flip and unbothered. Keith blames the internet. 

Lance raises the hand his bag is in like a fist raised to the heavens. “Go, strange art boy! Go! Draw as many dicks as your heart desires!” says Lance, in a weirdly intense, deep voice.

“…um?” says Keith. 

“Thanks, brain wolf?” Lance says in the manner of someone who really thinks everyone in the world knows every possible reference. 

“Nope,” says Keith. “Also: what the fuck.”

“I’ll just… go,” says Lance, looking a little bit like he wants the floor to swallow him up. Too bad for Lance, the floor doesn’t ever listen; Keith knows. “See you around.”

“Be safe,” Keith says dully, waving at Lance’s back.

“So, um, _Yikes,_ ” says Allura swooping in like a mercy angel, because _end this._ “You can be done, now.”

“Thank you,” says Keith. Keith is very ready to be done, now.

“And is there, like, a happy medium?” asks Allura. “Between relaxed and _intense?_ ”

“Nnnnot really,” says Keith. He’s tried. He’s tried a lot.

“That poor boy’s heart,” says Allura, hand over her own.

“I know,” says Keith.

“You trampled it,” says Allura, still all _poor unfortunate boy_ but Keith’s starting to realize that Allura is very easily amused.

“I _know_ ,” whines Keith, playing into it a little, because at least if Allura finds him amusing he’ll get to keep his home and his job. 

Allura claps him on the shoulder. “You could just… be the flirt that apparently your entire personality wants you to be, you know. People won’t be so crushed if they see it happening to everyone.”

It’s advice Keith’s heard before. “I just really hate being accused of leading people on,” he says, as honest as he knows how to be. He gets a full-body bump against his side for his effort, so that’s something.

“You did very well today,” says Allura, last hints of mirth gone from her voice in his ear; just pride remains. “Get some rest. I’ll give you a wake up call tomorrow, okay? Until you stop forgetting where you’re supposed to be.”

“That’d be really nice,” Keith smiles into her shoulder, still so very done. He’ll leave in a minute.


	4. this is probably why most people text before they come visiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith tries to make up for missing a call from Kolivan, after everything the man's done for him, but Kole's having quite the busy night and Keith is dead on his feet. Also, the most awkward missed text.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> real life sucks, but fanfiction is a beautiful escapist fantasy. *looks at tags* oh shit. 
> 
> Well, good thing I wrote a few chapters ahead, huh?

Keith’s three-hundred-year-old brick of a Nokia died while he was at work, so after collapsing on his couch for an hour he gets up to find the idiosyncratic little charger. It’s more tape than cord at this point, and since they haven’t made phones this cheap with proprietary charging ports in ages, he’s about due for an upgrade whether he has the money or not.   
  
While he’s searching for where ever he left the stupid thing, he manages to start his computer, locate and plug in his equally well-loved ereader, start a pot of coffee, and put all his old class materials into a stolen milk crate to be somebody else’s problem. His notification noise goes off like fifteen times while he tries to decide if he remembers enough of where he was in _Guards, Guards!_ to continue where he left off.   
  
Most of the alerts are missed calls from various university numbers; it’s too late in the day to return them anyway, and furthermore he had been assured that everything was properly in order when he’d left yesterday, so what the actual fuck? That was a problem for _tomorrow Keith_.  
  
There’s a text from Shiro, _help the undergrads are thirsty i just wanna teach them o-chem T.T_. Keith hits paste on the reply and sure enough, _0123456789_ is still in his clipboard. Because texting on just 12 keys is too much trouble.   
  
There’s also a missed call from Kolivan, about 15 minutes ago. It’s been a long time since he talked to Kole. He’s really not the small-talking type, and while Keith doesn’t _get_ it, he can respect it, so when Keith moved out of Marmora’s back room, he stuffed an extra $100 into a birthday card and didn’t talk to him until the next time he was broke and hungry and out of his room. So… before Shiro moved out, probably. Keith feels bad about that; without Kolivan, Keith would not only have been homeless, but he wouldn’t have had the faintest idea about how to get the scholarships or odd jobs that have paid for his lifestyle so far. He owes Kole more than that.  
  
Also, his fridge is empty, and Keith has an open tab at Marmora.

In the four blocks between his apartment and the bar, Keith’s ereader connects to five different secured wifi signals, showing that nobody but nobody gives a goddamn about security these days, if they haven’t changed their passwords in the last five years. Keith can’t type X or Z on the damn thing without cutting his thumb, but he gets his _But you are a tall drink of water_ out to Shiro eventually. He sticks the thing into is coat pocket as he bypasses the line to talk directly with Thace.   
  
“Party tonight?” He jerks his thumb at the people patiently waiting to get in; Marmora is a popular enough bar, but they’re more known for Kolivan’s ridiculously extensive food menu. It’s not the kind of thing that has people waiting for… at least twenty minutes, by the length of the line, to get in.  
  
“Some internet radio thing,” Thace confirms.   
  
“ _Podcast_ ,” Keith corrects gently. “Doesn’t your sister have one?”  
  
“ _Shh_ ,” says Thace. “I can’t have the young ones know I understand what they’re talking about.”  
  
“Whatever, old man,” Keith rolls his eyes and then asks, “So is the boss in the kitchen or the office?”  
  
“Kitchen,” Thace confirms. “Did you talk to him yet?”  
  
“Just missed the call.” A sudden gust makes the girls waiting for Thace to card them next yell wordlessly; they’re probably getting pretty impatient. “I figured, hey, I was getting hungry anyway.” He adds a pointed look at the line for good measure.  
  
“Fine, fine,” Thace says, and holds up a Designated Driver entry bracelet. This is fine by Keith, because it means he gets free coffee all night, and Keith can’t afford his caffeine addiction at the best of times.  
  
“Hey, what the hell?” the girl who is third in line says. She doesn’t sound mad, at least, just amused.  
  
“He’s here for a job interview,” says Thace, which. Well, thanks for the warning, buddy.

The interior of Marmora has been completely reconfigured to make the raised dance floor into a kind of makeshift stage. The tables on the far side have been blocked off with an unused sandwich board to make a safe place for the recording equipment, and presumably to give the … talent? Is that the right word? Some breathing room. There’s a mix of tall barstools — the ones that Keith helped fix as his first job for Kolivan, he thinks with a smile — and comfortable looking but legless loungers from the office Keith used to sleep in on the platform, and it looks like the entertainers (?) are arguing about how to set up the microphones. Keith hopes it takes them a while; most of the people outside were wearing what looked like merch t-shirts, it’d be a shame for them to miss the first twenty minutes of the show.  
  
The fans seem to be well behaved, at least; not a lot of people pacing around and making things harder for the staff, no one sitting around with a glass of water and a pinched expression. It’s the kind of busy that Kolivan really likes, so Keith’s glad the whole podcast thing worked for him.   
  
“Hey, thanks for waiting,” says a bartender Keith’s never seen, but she has a shirt from last year’s golf scramble on, so she’s been here long enough to handle a packed dining room by herself, hopefully. “It’s been a crazy night; what can I get you?”   
  
“You can tell the kitchen that Keith’s here,” Keith says, taking a seat at the very corner of the bar, where he has extra elbow room, because the chairs keep getting squished to the other end of the bar.   
  
“No, no usuals, not tonight,” the bartender says. “I need to know what to charge you for anyway.”  
  
“Kolivan called me like twenty minutes ago, but I missed it,” Keith tells her. “If I’d known you guys were recording, I would’ve just called him back.”   
  
“Oh, shit, you're _Keith_ Keith,” she says with a very forced looking relaxed face. “Okay.” She looks between the kitchen, Keith, and the rest of the bar a few times before darting off for the doorway.  
  
“And a coffee would be great!” Keith adds as she disappeared. “It can be nuked, I’m not picky!”

The coffee Keith _does_ get has clearly been left on a burner for hours, but it’s black and more than slightly bitter and settles the eensiest bit of a withdrawal headache he’d been starting to deal with. A large fry, burnt to a crisp on one side and somehow undercooked on the other, quickly joins it, and three soft tacos that have lettuce and onion but no cheese; whoever’s in the kitchen with Kolivan knows that Keith is a) not picky and b) willing to pay for other people’s mistakes, if it comes in food form.   
  
Well, not pay, per se; he’s had an open tab, for food only, since back when he lived here, and Keith knows that Kolivan knows that Keith knows he’s getting away with a lot more than he actually pays for. He’s always felt awkward, like he’s taking advantage of Kole’s generosity, but those few weeks on the actual, literal streets taught him a lot about what he’s willing to deal with if it means sleeping under a real roof and not starving half to death. Kolivan won’t even let him thank him properly, so when he comes to Keith with a job that needs done, Keith makes sure it gets done, and tries not to let his tab rack up too high in the meantime.  
  
The show is pretty interesting, too, some kind of political comedy panel type thing; Keith recognizes some names, if not faces, although he feels like he should have done some homework before listening, because these people have _receipts_.  
  
He’s grateful that his ereader’s speakers don’t work, too, because he gets a reply from Shiro: _how long has your phone been off, exactly?_  
  
 _Only 15 missed calls_ , Keith types back slowly with only his pinky, trying to not eat that noisily even though he’s about 30 feet from any recording equipment.  
  
 _In this day and age? So like half a year :P_ Shiro responds, which, fair.  
  
 _So how bad was I really?_ Keith changes the subject instead of telling Shiro something he probably already knew.

**Author's Note:**

> Come bug me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/fedoranonymous), or catch up with everything I've already written on [pillowfort](https://pillowfort.io/posts/62333) or [tumblr](http://fedoranonymous.tumblr.com/tagged/fanfic%3A-a-space-for-amusement/chrono)! :)


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